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A Perfect Moral Storm The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change

ISBN: 9780195379440 | 0195379446

Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Pub. Date: 5/4/2011

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Summary Table of Contents Author Biography

Climate change is one, especially clear, instantiation of a profound challenge to humanity. The problem is genuinely global, dominantly intergenerational, and takes place in a setting where our theories are weak. This convergence justifies calling it a "perfect moral storm". One consequence of this storm is that, even if the other difficult ethical questions surrounding climate change could be answered, we might still find it difficult to act. For the storm makes us extremely vulnerable to moral corruption. This book explores how the perfect mo... MOREral storm is manifest in climate change. It argues that despite decades of awareness, we are currently accelerating hard into the problem in a way that defies standard explanations. This suggests that our current focus on the scientific and economic dimensions of the problem is too narrow, and the tendency to see climate change as a traditional tragedy of the commons facing nation states too optimistic. The key problem is that the current generation, and especially the most affluent, are in a position to pass on most of the costs of their behavior (and especially the most serious harms) to the global poor, future generations and nonhuman nature. This diagnosis helps to explain the past failures of international climate policy, and in particular the "shadow solutions" of Kyoto and Copenhagen. It also casts light on some of the seemingly perpetual problems in our public discourse, and on the current push towards geoengineering. Finally, it suggests a need for better public ethics. We must work harder on articulating the ethical problem, and moral constraints on solutions. In the meantime, there is a role for "defensive" moral and political philosophy, aimed at preserving the quality of public discourse.

Climate change is a global problem that is predominantly an intergenerational conflict, and which takes place in a setting where our ethical impulses are weak. This "perfect moral storm" poses a profound challenge to humanity. This book explains how the "perfect storm" metaphor makes sense of our current malaise, and why a better ethics can help see our way out.

Climate change is arguably the great problem confronting humanity, but we have done little to head off this looming catastrophe. In The Perfect Moral Storm, philosopher Stephen Gardiner illuminates our dangerous inaction by placing the environmental crisis in an entirely new light, considering it as an ethical failure. Gardiner clarifies the moral situation, identifying the temptations (or "storms") that make us vulnerable to a certain kind of corruption. First, the world's most affluent nations are tempted to pass on the cost of climate change to the poorer and weaker citizens of the world. Second, the present generation is tempted to pass the problem on to future generations. Third, our poor grasp of science, international justice, and the human relationship to nature helps to facilitate inaction. As a result, we are engaging in willful self-deception when the lives of future generations, the world's poor, and even the basic fabric of life on the planet is at stake. We should wake up to this profound ethical failure, Gardiner concludes, and demand more of our institutions, our leaders and ourselves.

"This is a radical book, both in the sense that it faces extremes and in the sense that it goes to the roots." --Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

"The book's strength lies in Gardiner's success at understanding and clarifying the types of moral issues that climate change raises, which is an important first step toward solutions." --Science Magazine

"Gardiner has expertly explored some very instinctual and vitally important considerations which cannot realistically be ignored. --Required reading." --Green Prophet

"Gardiner makes a strong case for highlighting and insisting on the ethical dimensions of the climate problem, and his warnings about buck-passing and the dangerous appeal of moral corruptions hit home." --Times Higher Education

"Stephen Gardiner takes to a new level our understanding of the moral dimensions of climate change. A Perfect Moral Storm argues convincingly that climate change is the greatest moral challenge our species has ever faced - and that the problem goes even deeper than we think." --Peter Singer, Princeton University

Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction: A Global Environmental Tragedy
I. Some Assumptions
II. Introducing the Perfect Storm Metaphor
III. Climate Change
IV. The Wider Relevance of the Model
V. Outline of the Book
Part A: Overview
1. A Perfect Moral Storm
I. Why Ethics?
II. The Global Storm
III. The Intergenerational Storm
IV. The Theoretical Storm
V. The Problem of Moral Corruption
2. A Consumption Tragedy
I. What is the Point of Game Theory
II. Motivati... MORE

Stephen Gardiner is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and the Program on Values in Society, University of Washington, Seattle.

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A Perfect Moral Storm The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change

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